<em>Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, Neither gather in barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them</em>. (Matthew 6:26)
Last Christmas, to my surprise, I received a card wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from “Adrian, Tanglefoot, Peanut, Trixie & Dixie, Maria & Mrs Whitebird, Sydney, Stanley, Capt Beaky and All the Gang”.
Adrian has the Big Issue pitch outside Westminster Cathedral and the “gang” are some of his 40-odd feral pigeon friends, each of which he has honoured with a name. The fluctuating flock inhabits the neighbouring buildings and the two old London plane trees either side of the cathedral plaza.
Feral pigeons have an average of four broods of two eggs per year, but Adrian notices that numbers increase and decrease with the weather. London’s record summer heat of 2023 saw annual broods rise to six and seven, whereas the cold and wet spring and summer this year has seen a marked decline of young birds. Feral pigeons are promiscuous, as the variety of their often-beautiful plumage reveals, and nest in all seasons.
Just as Adrian identifies individual birds by name, so each one reveals its character as it settles on his arm. His oldest bird is Captain Beaky, who is at least 12 and “always avoids getting wet”. Cosseted racing pigeons, which cost up to one million dollars, can live for 20 years. Their most famous owner, apart from the royal one with the long-established and splendidly updated loft at Sandringham, is the boxer Mike Tyson. Feral pigeons, even if the result of a pairing with a strayed racing bird, have far shorter lives. Females, worn out by the constant demands of the males, are lucky to survive more than three years.
Fr John Scott, who until recently edited the cathedral’s <em>Oremus</em> magazine, has written that the congregation knows Adrian better than they know the cathedral clergy. If a pigeon gets inside the building, he is the first to be told. His advice is to let it be, until flying and lack of nourishment render it exhausted enough to be caught. Last time this happened it took a week to rescue the bird. Too tired to fly, it was protected on its first night of freedom by Tracy, who let it share her pavement bedding.
There could be no better shepherd than Adrian of his particular flock. He not only feeds and waters the birds – “pigeons will fight to get a drink, never for food” – but also acts as their vet. “Hair extensions are a new menace,” he says. Forever foraging, the birds are prone to entangle their feet in loose hairs and other materials, which garotte the blood supply to their toes. The toes rot and fall off, leaving the birds hobbling on stumps and unable to perch.
Mixie and Dixie are sisters, while Peanut and Tanglefoot are brothers. Adrian can tell, because it is rare for both squabs of a brood to survive. The brothers have disappeared, doubtless to join another flock, but may well return. Another inseparable couple are Mr and Mrs Nolegs, each stump-footed. He calls them “the Catholics” because "they’ll never divorce”.
A further hazard the cathedral birds face on a daily basis comes f rom their greatest enemy, the peregrine falcon, whose stoop on it s prey has been timed at 242 mph – a speed equivalent to the fiercest hurricane, making it the world’s fastest creature. Peregrines inhabit many of Britain’s cathedrals, the buildings in cities most like their native cliffs, and feral pigeons are their favourite urban prey. There is an ironic logic to this development, since the 1,000 domestic pigeon breeds, of which the feral is a mishmash to a lesser or greater degree, descend from that other cliff dweller, the rock dove: a bird so thoroughly cross-bred in the UK with feral interlopers that in its pure form it is only found collectively in the Outer Hebrides.
Peregrines have not yet nested on Westminster Cathedral but young peregrines are regular visitors from the nearby Palace of Westminster and Battersea Power Station. Even adult peregrines miss many more times than they score. One day, Adrian reported that a young peregrine, presumably having missed a pigeon, had settled on the side of a raised flower bed in the promenade of Cardinal Place opposite. Passers-by taking photographs surrounded it, like paparazzi hounding a celebrity.
The older they get, the more efficient peregrines become, as indicated by the tell-tale count of detached pigeon wings around the cathedral. Recently, Adrian treated a mutilated bird which had survived a peregrine attack. Its rump and tail feathers were missing and one leg was broken. “Better a useless leg than a wing,” said Adrian. He named it Lucky and treated it with antibiotics. Lucky’s gratitude was obvious.
Adrian had recently replaced his deceased shih-tzu companion, Murphy, with another shih-tzu, Rolo, still a puppy. Not only did Lucky cling to Adrian but also snuggled up to the welcoming Rolo. Within days, its rump and quicker-growing tail feathers were restored, and even the broken leg seemed less problematic. When Adrian disappeared with Rolo for a few days on a fishing trip, Lucky sat hunched and bereft, its healthy neighbours preening and scavenging with happy indifference.
On his return, Adrian, who suffers from type 1 diabetes, was full of praise for Rolo on another score. Adrian had passed out for lack of sugar and came round to find Rolo feverishly licking his face and nibbling his ears. He had been unconscious for half an hour: “I always knew he was a special dog and that proved it. I’d be dead if he hadn’t revived me.” Rolo is also discerning with the pigeons: “He only chases them when he’s away from the plaza. The one bird he chases here is the robin. And they say dogs are colour blind!”
Adrian deplores the bad reputation feral pigeons have, as witnessed by the American comedian Tom Lehrer’s song “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. Later, in his film <em>Stardust Memories</em>, Woody Allen infamously popularised the notion that feral pigeons are “rats with wings”. Adrian is on the side of Marilyn Monroe, who paid the urchins in New York’s Central Park to release the gregarious and friendly birds they had caught to kill and sell. “It’s not them that’s rats,” says Adrian, “it’s us.”
Many members of the cathedral clergy and congregation revere Adrian, who has had the cathedral pitch for 15 years. Busybodies nevertheless complain to Westminster council that his presence is responsible for the undesirable pigeons which, as he says, is a complaint that should be made, if at all, to the RSPCA. It is also nonsense, as the droppings show from the birds’ roosting in the plaza’s plane trees.
The trees date from the time of the Bridewell prison, for women and boys under 17, whose foundations are underneath the newer building. A boy could be incarcerated for playing Knock Knock Ginger – knock ing on a door and running away – or even for spinning a top in the street. “Of all the conversations I’d like to have, it’s with those two trees,’ says Adrian.
<em>(Photos courtesy author.)</em>
<em>John McEwen is the author (with Carry Akroyd) of </em>Swoop Sing Perch Paddle<em> – Birds (Bloomsbury, £14.99)</em>
<strong><strong>This article appears in the special December/January 2024 double edition of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a></strong></strong>.
